"I want to thank Dr. Singer for inviting me to
address this luncheon seminar. It’s an honor to
be with you and to share the program with one of our
country’s most distinguished soldier scholars, my
friend Major General Bob Scales.

"From the time I was a young man, reading military
history has been my hobby. And while this hobby
didn’t necessarily serve a professional purpose when I
was practicing law in Lexington, Missouri, it has certainly
helped me in my work on the House Armed Services
Committee. My background as a student of military
history also impressed upon me the importance of professional
military education, which is key to developing the strategic
thinkers and innovative leaders who will serve as military
advisers to the President and to
Congress.

"Today, I want to talk about a fundamental problem
affecting the national security of the United States.
The fact is, we suffer from the complete absence of a
comprehensive strategy for advancing U.S. interests. As
a result, major policies are inconsistent and contradictory
in different areas of the world and across different policy
realms. We suffer from a splintering of national power,
which hinders our ability to address threats coherently and
to reassure and cooperate with allies.

"Our next President will have a unique opportunity
to develop a strategy suited for today’s rapidly
changing world. While we lack a comprehensive strategy
now, the U.S. has had numerous successful strategies in past
years. During the Cold War, both major political
parties supported a strategy of containment for confronting
the Soviet Union. During World War II, the United
States had a widely-supported strategy of focusing first on
the War in Europe, and deferring some effort from the War in
the Pacific until the Nazi threat was contained. At
other times in our nation’s history, we have pursued
less successful strategies, such as a strategy of
isolationism during the period between World Wars I and
II.

"In my view, our next President would be well
advised to follow the example of President Dwight D.
Eisenhower, who shortly after taking office commissioned the
Solarium Project to review strategies for dealing with the
Soviet Union. After a competitive process in which
three teams of advisers promoted the merits of three
strategies, President Eisenhower decided to continue the
policy of containment developed by President
Truman.

"Beyond engaging in and personally leading a
Solarium-type approach to national strategy, the next
President will need to ensure that any new strategy for
America can truly develop support across the political
spectrum. Congress has a role to play in the process,
and to ensure that a new strategy is one that the American
people can support, the general debate should involve the
American people.

"To develop a new strategy, we have to ask ourselves
a number of questions. This list is not exhaustive by
any means, but let me share a few thoughts. Ultimately,
determining the critical interests a strategy is designed to
protect depends upon the place America occupies in the
world. Who do we want to be? What do we see as
our role? How do we want to interact with the rest of
the world to get there?

"We must consider the effort and the sacrifices we
are willing to make. We must also look at the world as
it is, not as we’d like it to be, and we must
acknowledge that much of the world does not necessarily see
us as we would see ourselves. We must look beyond Iraq
and Afghanistan. As this vision develops, we must also
keep in mind that it is no good if we cannot provide the
means to achieve it, nor is it useful if it is not a
realistic fit with the rest of the world.

"The global environment is ever changing.
While we cannot control the sea swell of change, we must
prepare ourselves to navigate those waters. Regional
power is shifting; some large nation states – such as
China, India, and Brazil, to name a few – are ascending
and verge on global power status. Russia may already be
there, again. Do their interests conflict or coincide
with ours? Is their rise a challenge to oppose or an
opportunity to engage?

"It is also clear that a number of trans-national
issues will challenge us, while others may provide positive
potential. Fundamentalist terrorism and the
proliferation of dangerous weapons are obvious examples of
serious challenges, of course, but what about climate change,
the fragility of increasingly connected world financial
markets, or the outbreak of pandemic disease? These are
challenges that present themselves without any malicious
intentional human action.

"Today, the United States is the world’s
dominant economic, political, and military power. We
have no peer or near-peer competitor, nor does one appear
likely to emerge in the near future. President Clinton
eloquently described a vision of the U.S. as “the
indispensable nation,” not a world hegemon, but a
consistent and ever present ally and arbiter acting around
the world. I believe the U.S. should remain the
indispensable nation.

"Those who would have us significantly reduce our
role on the world stage cannot credibly describe the state of
the world’s affairs in the absence of U.S.
leadership. To embrace such an approach, we would have
to accept that significant portions of the world would simply
be left to their own devices. Yet we know that places
as remote as the Hindu Kush are home to those who would
attack us and our allies. So what other corner of the
world do we judge to be so distant and so remote as to be
beyond our interest? And how would world fault lines,
such as the Taiwan Strait, the India/Pakistan Line of
Control, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, respond to a
world leadership vacuum? The answer is: not well.

"What, then, does accepting a role of world leadership
entail? As the world’s indispensable nation, we
should take a leadership role in advancing and protecting our
interests around the world in concert with our friends and
allies, as part of an open and evolving international system
that is fair to all nations. With this role as our
goal, we can define those interests critical to achieving it,
and develop and adopt an appropriate strategy.

"The engines of our claim to leadership in the
future are the engines that made this country great in the
first place: our robust economy that provides
opportunity while connecting us with the rest of the world;
in productive partnerships; and our unceasing pursuit of what
is right, fair, and just, even when we fall short of those
ideals. To the extent we’ve veered off course in
those areas, whether because of crippling energy dependence,
unprecedented levels of foreign debt, our departure from
sound constitutional practices, or even when and how we
marshal our forces for war, we must refocus internally to
address those challenges and master them once
again.

"If we redouble our efforts, we can recapture the
international prestige that translates our unmatched power
into the ability to alter the course of world events. There
is no reason why we cannot gain the confidence to understand
that the term “challenge,” even in the
international context, need not always have an adversarial
meaning. And we should not miss the opportunity to
refine the good things about America so that we remain the
obvious – the indispensable – choice for a
continued global leadership role.

"So in the course of developing a new strategy, I
recommend that the President judge those new proposals
against a simple set of principles:

"The first priority of the federal government is the
protection of the U.S. homeland and its citizens.

"2. The foundation for continued U.S.
leadership is the strength of our economy and our commitment
to our values and principles.

"3. Do not let an outside power dominate Europe
or the Western Pacific, and in addition maintain freedom of
the seas.

"4. U.S. world leadership should be earned by
virtue of the esteem other nations hold for us, engendered by
our productivity and moral leadership, and not through a
self-justifying hegemony which views the peaceful rise of
other nations as an inherent threat.

"5. Insulate the Western Hemisphere from
hostile outside powers with a collaborative approach.

"6. Transnational events that can undermine
states and challenge or dislocate large numbers of people
– the AIDS pandemic, terrorism, and global climate
change to give a few examples – should be addressed by
international coalitions coordinating globally, using the
full range of national power.

"7. Our military strength serves as both a
source of deterrence for would-be aggressors, and reassurance
for our friends and allies, but military action is a last
resort. When it is used -- whether multilateral or
unilateral -- strict adherence to the essential strategic
tenets propounded by Sun Tzu and Clausewitz is mandatory

"These principles do not define our strategy, for
they leave many questions unanswered. What kind of
international institutions, coalitions and alliances are
essential? What red lines should trigger a certain U.S.
response, even if it must be a unilateral response? How
do we define what constitutes a fair opportunity to advance
for those nations which perceive their current share of the
world’s resources as inadequate? And what
transnational events require a concerted international
response? These are judgments for the next President;
he should make them with input from a wide variety of
sources. But we all should take part in a dialogue to
help forge a new national consensus on a strategy that
fulfills our principles and helps us answer these hard
questions, ultimately guiding us to policies that are wise
and just.

"What I’ve just described is no easy
task. It will take a lot of brain power to get this
right. The President is going to have to lead this
effort and not just delegate to staff, but he will need to
have the best and the brightest minds at his disposal.
Some of these great thinkers will be civilians, some will be
military. We must have a system that finds these people
and cultivates them into the intellectual engines that will
drive this process.

"New challenges and the range of potential futures
will require creative and innovative solutions. But we
cannot make the mistake of embracing innovation for
innovation’s sake. In my opinion, in recent years
the Department of Defense has become infatuated by the latest
operational fad, embracing war fighting concepts that seemed
to ignore the lessons of Thucydides, Sun-Tzu, and
Clausewitz. You cannot violate the maxims of these
classical theorists and expect enduring success in
international conflict. In some respects I think
we’re seeing that, first in Iraq – although now
perhaps corrected – and also in Afghanistan.
Innovation without foundation is folly. And so there is
a dilemma here: while we want “out of the
box” thinkers, they must be bounded by reality and
rooted in the fundamentals.

"I would like to think that our efforts over the
years to add rigor to the professional military education
system have cultivated the heavy hitting thinkers, with real
world experience and intellectual grounding, who could make
invaluable contributions to any project to develop a new
strategy. I know that our country has the talent to
undertake this task and to do it well. But it will be
up to the next President to lead the way. I firmly
believe that a new comprehensive strategy for advancing U.S.
interests must be a priority and I am committed to doing all
I can to move the process
along.